High-volume recruitment may sound like a numbers game, but it’s as much art as science. In fact, our latest research shows that although most recruiters say recruitment metrics are useful for making decisions, few believe those metrics to be “correct” and “complete.”
 

Therefore, even in our data-rich age, talent acquisition (TA) experts must rely on a combination of experience, intuition, and insights along with technologies, expert services and metrics.

This is an important lesson in an age when three-fourths of responding organizations either have employed or plan to employ high-volume hiring.

Recent labor shortages, among other issues, make high-volume hiring difficult. This difficulty is further underscored by the fact that 60% of our respondents say their organizations struggle with a scarcity of quality candidates for these positions.

This report takes a deep dive into the topic of high-volume and hourly hiring so that recruiters and HR professionals can learn more about the approaches most closely associated with success and stay abreast of the fast-moving topics of outsourcing services, emerging trends, key metrics and the use of recruitment technologies, including artificial intelligence.

Here are the major findings from the study.

The Persistent Vitality of High-volume Hiring

Finding: High-volume recruitment is prevalent in a majority of organizations

We asked respondents if their organization engages in high-volume recruitment (either internally, with a third-party supplier, or some combination). Two-fifths say their organization is currently engaged in such recruiting, a quarter has done so in the past and one-tenth have
plans to do so in the future.

Just a quarter say they have never engaged in high-volume recruitment and have no intention of doing so. In our 2023 study, about the same proportion (72%) of respondents said their organizations have had experience with high-volume recruiting either at present or in the past or expect to do so sometime in the future. It seems that high-volume recruiting continues to go strong.

Practices and Trends in High-volume Recruitment

Practices
Finding: Almost half of organizations have outsourced some part of their high-volume recruitment to one or more other entities

Among organizations that are currently engaged in high-volume recruiting or have done so in the past, just over half (52%) say they outsource the recruitment sometimes (45%) or always (7%). This is an increase in the proportion of respondents who said the same (46%) in last year’s research on the same topic. However, most (59%) organizations looking to engage in high-volume hiring recruitment over the next 6 months to 1 year plan to rely on their in-house resources. Perhaps these organizations have built better internal capacity to engage in high-volume recruitment.

Finding: Staffing agencies and job boards are popular choices for organizations that outsource high-volume recruitment.

More than six in 10 organizations use staffing agencies for high-volume recruitment. About three-fifths (57%) use job boards (e.g., Indeed), and two-fifths rely on temp agencies and recruitment process outsourcing organizations. These were the top choices in our 2023 research study as well.

There are some key differences between these agencies and services. Staffing agencies often act as a finders – they source, pre-screen and introduce the candidate to the hiring managers. A recruitment process outsourcing organization (RPO), on the other hand, acts as a recruitment expert to handle the complete or specific part of recruitment based on the company’s requirements. RPOs generally handle identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, interviewing, and onboarding candidates for jobs. Job boards offer organizations the ability to advertise jobs, but the hiring process is often handled by the organization.
 

Trends
Finding: One-fifth of organizations say attempts to organize labor among hourly workers have increased over the last year.

Close to two-thirds (65%) of respondents believe there has not been an increase in such attempts. Over one-fifth (22%) say there has been an increase in such activity, while another 13% say their workforce is already unionized.

Last year, just 12% said that there had been an increase in unionization among hourly workers. This is a trend that needs watching. The Economic Policy Institute reports that in 2023, 16.2 million workers were represented by a union—an increase of 191,000. At the same time, the percentage of workers represented by a union decreased from 11.3% to 11.2%, as unionization efforts were unable to keep pace with 2023’s strong job growth.

Take advantage of this opportunity to gain valuable insights and actionable strategies from our exclusive HR Research Institute research findings.
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